ANSYS Making Progress on Electric Vehicle Battery Development

by Autos - June 20, 2012

Pittsburgh, PA — One year into a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) funded project, ANSYS (NASDAQ: ANSS), General Motors LLC, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), and ESim are leveraging engineering simulation technology to optimize electric and hybrid vehicle battery performance. The team achieved significant milestones during the past year in support of the DOE’s Computer Aided Engineering for Electric Drive Vehicle Batteries (CAEBAT) project.

GM awarded ANSYSa subcontract to develop battery software tools that will help accelerate development of next-generation electric vehicles (EV). The project is a result of a competitive procurement through the DOE’s NREL that was presented to GM last year.

The main goal of the CAEBAT project is to incorporate existing and new battery models into engineering simulation software to shorten design cycles and optimize batteries for increased performance, safety, and life span. The project is driving EV innovation.

The GM-ANSYS-ESim team’s achievements over the past year include prototyping and validating three electrochemistry modeling approaches. The partners also prototyped a co-simulation feature, which blends battery multiphysics and system simulation technologies that enable engineers to shed unnecessary details and increase simulation efficiency without compromising the accuracy of the model.

“Traditionally, the EV battery industry depends mostly on the expensive and time-consuming process of design-build-test-break for prototyping and manufacturing these batteries,” said Jan Aase, director of the vehicle development research lab at GM Global R&D. “However, the virtual development of engineered products has proven to be an effective way of evaluating many design alternatives. This specific team was selected because of their individual track records of success in their respective fields for providing reliable technologies that lead to efficient products.”

The team is leveraging NREL’s considerable experience in multiphysics, multi-scale modeling of lithium-ion battery systems. The resulting design tools will be made commercially available through ANSYS. GM plans to validate and apply the model to its electric vehicles in development.

“ANSYS is well known for providing reliable simulation technology to enable sustainable design across a wide range of industries, including automotive,” said Sandeep Sovani, manager of global automotive strategy at ANSYS. “The recent demands from customers to make vehicles more practical coupled with government regulations are creating unprecedented innovation within the auto industry. ANSYS is proud to be at the forefront of this innovation surge by developing software tools that will accelerate the production of safe, reliable, high-performance and long-lasting lithium-ion batteries for EVs and make vehicles more fuel efficient and sustainable.”

NREL expects that the resulting systems will become commercial offerings in about two years. This initiative is funded by DOE’s Vehicle Technologies Program in the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.